Hollywood star Johnny Depp stated a Virginia judge should reject his ex-wife Amber Heard’s request for a new trial noting that she had plenty of time to raise potential issues over a juror, new court papers show.
Lawyers for the veteran actor said that the “Aquaman” star’s motions for a new trial “verge into the frivolous” and asked the Fairfax, Virginia, judge to uphold the $10 million verdict he won last month.
In court papers filed Monday, Depp's lawyers noted that Heard's claim of Juror 15 was not the person who was summoned for jury duty, tainting her right to a fair trial, and should be rejected.
They added that what Heard’s team couches as “new” pieces of information about the juror in question – who was seated at the trial – were facts that were available to her when the defamation trial began.
The clerk’s office gave both sides the “pre-panel jury list” more than two months before the blockbuster proceedings started.
Heard admitted that she knew there were problems with Juror 15 when the trial began, the filing claims.
“Ms. Heard, therefore, concedes she had more than enough time before the trial started, and during the six-week trial, when at least two alternates were available, to investigate and discover the alleged ‘new’ facts,” the court doc states.
Last week, Heard’s team argued that there were two people with the same last name living at the same address – one 77 and one 52. But the younger one showed up for jury duty despite the summons going out to the septuagenarian.
“It is deeply troubling for an inpidual not summoned for jury duty nonetheless to appear for jury duty and serve on a jury, especially in a case such as this,” her lawyers wrote in the papers arguing for a new trial.
But Depp’s team said that even if “a son served instead of his father, there would be no prejudice, as Juror 15 was qualified to serve as a juror in Fairfax County and was vetted by the court and the parties counsel just as all of the other jurors were.”
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